BRUSSELS—Belgian authorities on Friday arrested Mohamed Abrini, who they now suspect was the third attacker at the Brussels airport in March, U.S. and European officials said. He has been one of Europe’s most-wanted terror suspects since November for alleged links to the network behind the Paris massacre.

According to two officials, Belgian authorities suspect Mr. Abrini was the attacker who escaped from the national airport during the March 22 attacks, wearing a dark hat and a light-colored jacket. Thirty-two people were killed that day by suicide bombers at the airport and the Maelbeek subway station in central Brussels.

Authorities also arrested a man who is suspected of being involved in the attacks at the Maelbeek subway station on Friday, according to a U.S. official.

The arrests on Friday appear to be the first major breakthrough for Belgian authorities since the Brussels attacks.

If Belgian authorities can confirm that Mr. Abrini is the so-called “man in the hat” who has been the focus of an intense search since the attacks and confirm the involvement of the second alleged Maelbeek attacker, they will have resolved some of the key remaining questions about the attacks.

Belgian authorities were careful Friday with their public pronouncements after a previous misstep in identifying the third bomber. Belgian police arrested and charged Faycal Cheffou in the days after the attacks but later released him after establishing that he wasn’t at the airport on March 22. Federal prosecutors said they will give a press conference at 1930 GMT.

Mr. Abrini was previously believed to be a small-time member of the terror network. Growing up in Brussels, Mr. Abrini worked in a bakery, earning the nickname “Brioche,” before becoming involved first in petty crime and then with radical islamists in the Brussels district of Molenbeek.

Belgian federal prosecutors issued a wanted notice in late November for Mr. Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian citizen, on suspicions he helped some of the Paris attackers, and warned he was armed and dangerous.

Mr. Abrini had been seen in surveillance video with Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam at a gas station north of Paris two days before the attack there. At the time, Mr. Abrini was driving one of the cars that was used two days later to commit the Paris attacks.

Belgian officials and counterterrorism analysts emphasized that people involved in the attacks likely remain at large, describing a potentially extensive network.

The U.S. official said Belgian authorities also arrested Osama Krayem on Friday in connection with the attack on the subway. The official said that Mr. Krayem was seen on surveillance camera in the subway system before the attack talking with Khalid el-Bakraoui, the suicide bomber who struck at Maelbeek station.

The video footage also showed Mr. Krayem with a backpack similar to the one in which Mr. Bakraoui carried his bomb, the U.S. official said.

Mr. Krayem was identified by authorities as a lead suspect in the subway bombing in the days after the attack, officials said. Mr. Krayem, like several of the members of the network who are known to have planned and participated in the Paris and Brussels attacks, travelled into Europe along the migrant route, they said.

He used a fake Syrian passport with the name Naim Al Hamed, officials said.

Earlier Friday, Belgian federal prosecutors said in a statement they could confirm there had been several arrests connected to the Brussels attack. The arrests came after the Belgian prosecutors and police appealed on Thursday for help in the search for the third man.

They released additional video footage and said they had determined that he was seen with the two suicide bombers and then walked away from the airport after the explosions. Prosecutors said they were seeking the public’s help to find additional photographs and determine the path he took from the airport.

It is unclear whether the request for assistance yielded new clues or whether they were already closing in on the suspects.

Belgian authorities have come under fire, both internationally and at home, for their handling of investigations into local terror cells. Soon after the Brussels attacks, Turkey disclosed it had warned Belgium last summer that it suspected Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of the Brussels suicide bombers, had ties to Islamic State.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel this week called criticism of the country’s counterterrorism efforts “completely wrong,” pointing to victories by Belgian authorities in foiling a terrorist plot targeting police in the east Belgian town of Verviers and arresting Mr. Abdeslam.

Mr. Abdeslam was captured on March 18 after a four-month manhunt. Soon after his arrest in Molenbeek, a Brussels district, Mr. Abdeslam said he had been planning follow-on attacks in Brussels.

Mr. Abrini co-owned a snack bar in the Brussels district of Molenbeek until December 2014. Both Mr. Abrini and Mr. Abdeslam were living nearby. Mr. Abrini’s snack bar was raided on Nov. 22, two days before Belgian officials issued the arrest warrant for him.

Molenbeek has been a focus of the terror investigations and home to several of the accused attackers including Mr. Abdeslam and Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the accused ringleader of the Paris attacks who was killed in a police raid days later.

Of athletic build, with dark hair, Mr. Abrini was believed to be “armed and dangerous,” according to a wanted notice issued by Europol, Europe’s police coordinating body.

Mr. Abrini’s younger brother flew to Istanbul in January 2014 and made his way to Syria, where he fought with an Islamic State unit, according to court documents and a person familiar with the investigation. The brother was killed in Syria in August 2014, according to the documents.

Mr. Abrini had traveled to the U.K. last summer, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale, the lead officer for the U.K.’s West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism unit, said security services were providing support to the French and Belgian investigations.

After Paris, people involved in the planning, officials said, were able to reconstitute and begin planning the strikes on Brussels.

The attacks in Brussels also followed quickly after the arrest of Mr. Abdeslam. Some analysts warned that a similar attempt can’t be ruled out following Mr. Abrini’s arrest.

“As long as you haven’t dismantled the whole network, there is a risk of follow-on attacks,” said Brice De Ruyver, a professor of criminology at University of Ghent and former Belgian government adviser. “But of course the more of those you arrest, the more information you get and the more links you can make that would help you complete the puzzle.”

—Matthias Verbergt in Stockholm and Alexis Flynn and Benoit Faucon in London contributed to this article.

Brigitte Gabriel, Terror Expert & Founder and CEO of Act for America and Pamela Geller, President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Editor & Publisher of Atlas Shrugs, and co-author of the new book The Post-American Presidency, Obama’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America – They are there to address the following events happening around world:

The attacks in Brussels and the search for 8 remaining ISIS terrorists

The attack on Christian women & children celebrating Easter in Pakistan

The commitment of Obama to bring in more unvetted refugees

The truth about political correctness and radical Islamic terrorists

President Obama is calling for more openness to refugees in the aftermath of the Brussels terror attacks, urging Americans to continue leading by “example” when it comes to immigration policy.

“As we move forward in this fight, we have to wield another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our military, and our counter​-​terrorism work, and our diplomacy. And that’s the power of our example,” the president said in his weekly address on Saturday.

Papers reading “Molenbeek” are seen during a candle light vigil to the victims of the Paris attacks in Brussels’ Molenbeek district, on November 18, 2015. Molenbeek residents held a candle vigil at the town square where the Abdeslam family lives. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNAND

What did “we” do to “them”? We opened up our cities, our houses, our wallets. And in our secular temples of progress — our metro stations and airports and theaters — their sons are killing themselves, and taking our sons and daughters with them. There is nothing for which we need to apologize. “Occidentophobia” originated in the Muslim community. We need to demand they abandon it.

The first reaction to the Brussels massacres among postmodern European intellectuals was predictable: What did we, Europeans, do to them, our Muslims? How could followers of a religion that is proudly called “the religion of peace” commit these kinds of atrocities?

People like Peter Vandermeersch, the Belgian editor-in-chief of Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad, and Belgian writer David Van Reybrouck, both accomplished intellectuals, argued that Belgium must have done something terrible to deserve this. Their line of reasoning: The terrorists’ fury must be a reaction to their inhumane treatment at the hands of the West.

So, we blame ourselves in order to remain blameless. Safer to blame our own societies and socioeconomic conditions than to blame the religious and cultural concepts with which terrorists poison their own minds.

According to reports, the unemployment figure in Brussels’ infamous Molenbeek neighborhood — now referred to as the jihadi hothouse of Europe — is 30 percent. This is a relatively high figure in Western Europe, but not unusual in southern European countries or the Arab world. There is poverty in Molenbeek, but that poverty is relative. There is no starvation, no homelessness, no lack of medical infrastructure, no lack of schools.

Compared to average living standards in Morocco or Egypt, the average living standard in Molenbeek is comfortably middle-class. Like in any other Western European country, many Belgian institutions and organizations offer support when families need housing, food, education, and health care. Opportunities for success, and to study and become a respected member in society, are countless compared to those that exist in many immigrants’ countries of origin. Still, there is deep resentment among the younger generations of immigrant Moroccan families.

Immigration into the Netherlands from Morocco and Turkey is an expensive phenomenon for the taxpayer: In the modern welfare state immigrants are more dependent on the welfare state than the average citizen. Because of a lack of higher education and the lack of non-skilled jobs, immigrants absorb a higher part of unemployment and social security payments than the average citizen. As a group, they receive more money than they pay in taxes. They also show up much higher in crime statistics than their numbers would justify. There are many success stories, but there are also disappointing trends. Like radicalization. And the situation in Belgium is even worse.

There is no question that unemployment is much higher among Muslim immigrant communities than among the general public. There are two possible explanations.

The first goes something like this: The Belgian people are terribly xenophobic and anti-Moroccan, and deny their Moroccan neighbors opportunities to succeed in life. But if this were the case, the theory can be applied to every Western European country, as unemployment figures for Moroccan and other Muslim migrants across Europe are remarkably higher than average. This would indicate that European xenophobia has reached unbearable levels. Why would Muslims choose to stay in societies that showed such deep disrespect for their migrant population? Because they realize that an unemployed citizen in a European welfare state run by infidels has a better material life than an employed citizen in pious Morocco?

The notion that Moroccan-Belgians suffer from widespread exclusion, discrimination, and suppression is ridiculous — and yet completely acceptable among the politically-correct crowd. Life in Belgium is exceptionally good and safe for migrants — if they are willing to integrate into their new cultural environment, if they are willing to act as individuals, study with passion and openness, and accept the secular system of the West.

There is no difference at all in socioeconomic status between youngsters from a low-education, blue-collar Belgian background and youngsters from a Muslim migrant background. Both have to struggle, both have to overcome weak socioeconomic family situations. In Spain, youth unemployment has reached 50 percent and the welfare state is less developed than in Belgium, yet Spanish citizens aren’t blowing themselves up in metro stations.

The other explanation for the high unemployment figures among Muslims in Europe has nothing to do with exclusion and discrimination. A large segment of the migrant population is doing just fine, but a significant number — some say as many as 50 percent — have not rid themselves of the mental and cultural conditions that have kept their home country in its “developing country” status. The denial of equal rights to women, the lack of separation of state and church, bad education, excessive religiosity, patriarchal machismo — these are all on display in areas with a high percentage of migrants, including Molenbeek.

In December 2013, Professor Ruud Koopmans of the Berlin Social Science Center published a study on “Fundamentalism and out-group hostility,” in which he compared hostility among Muslim immigrants with hostility among Christian natives in Western Europe. He writes: “Almost 60 percent agree that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam, 75 percent think there is only one interpretation of the Quran possible to which every Muslim should stick and 65 percent say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live.” In regards to Christian citizens he concludes: “Less than 4 percent can be characterized as consistent fundamentalists.”

On hatred of Jews and homosexuals among Europe’s Muslim population, Koopmans finds: “Almost 60 percent reject homosexuals as friends and 45 percent think that Jews cannot be trusted. While about one in five natives can be considered as Islamophobic, the level of phobia against the West among Muslims — for which oddly enough there is no word; one might call it ‘Occidentophobia’ — is much higher still, with 54 percent believing that the West is out to destroy Islam.” Recorded rates of Christian hate toward Muslims hover around 10 percent.

“Occidentophobia” is an interesting term. It expresses a refusal to accept the essential concepts of life in the West. Young men like the perpetrators of the Brussels attacks have refused to embrace the social codes of Belgian life. They were raised on the idea that their religious ethics trump the ethics of the infidels (close to non-existent, in their eyes, in any case). Their second-rate socioeconomic status was therefore a humiliating affront, an indignity to be destroyed.

Muslim integration into Europe societies is successful when Muslims are willing to give up the mental confinement of their home countries — countries, let’s not forget, which they left in search of a better life. For as long as they refuse to adapt to a European state of mind, they will perpetuate resentment and a culture of violence.

What did “we” do to “them”? We opened up our cities, our houses, our wallets. And in our secular temples of progress — our metro stations and airports and theaters — their sons are killing themselves, and taking our sons and daughters with them. There is nothing for which we need to apologize. “Occidentophobia” originated in the Muslim community. We need to demand they abandon it.

On the back of the Brussels terror attack it is worthwhile remembering that while a majority of Muslims in the West appear to have no truck with terrorism or extremism, there are a significant number who sympathise with terrorism and repeatedly attempt to justify attacks on the West.

TERRORISM

An ICM poll from 2006 revealed that 20 per cent of British Muslims sympathised with the 7/7 bombers who brought terror to the streets of the British capital, killing 52 and injuring hundreds. This number rose to one in four British Muslims, according to NOP Research for Channel 4. With a British Muslim population of over 3 million today, that translates to roughly three quarters of a million terror-sympathising people in the UK.

The number rises for younger British Muslims – a sure sign that radicalisation through schools, mosques, and prisons (often via Saudi-funded groups) is creating a long-term problem in Europe. Thirty-one per cent of younger British Muslims endorsed or excused the 7/7 bombings of 2005, with just 14 per cent of those over 45 doing so.

Twenty-seven per cent of those polled in the United Kingdom say they had sympathy with the attacks on Charlie Hebdo – the French satirical magazine that published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammed last year, with 78 per cent supporting punishment for the publication of cartoons featuring Muhammed and 68 per cent supporting the arrest and prosecution of British people who “insult Islam.”

And this number pales in comparison to global Muslim population figures. According to World Public Opinion (2009) at the University of Maryland, 61 per cent of Egyptians, 32 per cent of Indonesians, 41 per cent of Pakistanis, 38 per cent of Moroccans, 83 per cent of Palestinians, 62 per cent of Jordanians, and 42 per cent of Turks appear to endorse or sympathise with attacks on Americans or American groups.

A 2013 study found that 16 per cent of young Muslims in Belgium believed that state terrorism is “acceptable,” while 12 per cent of young Muslims in Britain said that suicide attacks against civilians in Britain can be justified.

Pew Research from 2007 found that 26 per cent of young Muslims in America believed suicide bombings are justified, with 35 per cent in Britain, 42 per cent in France, 22 per cent in Germany, and 29 per cent in Spain feeling the same way.

And Muslims who are more devout or dedicated to Islam are three times more likely to believe that suicide bombings are justified — a harrowing statistic when you consider that 86 per cent of Muslims in Britain “feel that religion is the most important thing in their life.”

While just 5 per cent of UK Muslims said they would not report a terror attack being planned, the number leaps to 18 per cent amongst young, British Muslims. The anti-police narrative fuelled by groups like Black Lives Matter are no doubt contributing to this idea that people should not work with the police, with the British Muslim Youth group recently urging a boycott of police.

More recently, in 2015, it was revealed that 45 per cent of British Muslims think that hate preachers that advocate violence against the West represent “mainstream Islam.”

Forty per cent of British Muslims say they want Sharia law in the West, while 41 per cent oppose it.

Despite the fact that “Islamophobia” did not rise after the Paris Attacks, there remains a grievance industry across the Western world which targets young Muslims especially, urging them to feel victimised by Western governments for taking a stance against Islamism – and scarcely a tough stance at that.

Earlier this year it was reported that one in five prisoners in the United Kingdom’s top security jails is now Muslim, a rise of 23 per cent from just five years ago. In total, a 20 per cent increase in the jail population in Britain has been outstripped by the rise in Muslim inmates — up 122 per cent over 13 years.

The same disproportionate figures are borne out across the United States, where Pew datafrom 2011 revealed that Muslims made up 9 per cent of state and federal prisoners though at the time Muslims made up just 0.8 per cent of the U.S. population.

In 2008, the Washington Postreported “About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in [France’s] prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country’s population.”

ANTI-SEMITISM

“An average of 55 percent of Western European Muslims harbored antisemitic attitudes. Acceptance of antisemitic stereotypes by Muslims in these countries was substantially higher than among the national population in each country,” an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report found in 2015.

A Swedish government report from 2006 found that that 5 per cent of the total population held anti-Semitic views, with the number surging to 39 per cent amongst adult Muslims.

In Germany in 2012, a study of the country’s burgeoning Turkish population revealed that 62 percent of Turks in Germany said they wanted to only live amongst each other, with 46 per cent wanting the country to become a Muslim majority nation. This report also found that 18 per cent of the Turkish population thought of Jews as “inferior.”

Breitbart News reported in January about an ongoing exodus of French Jews, with some 8,000 headed for Israel in 2015 and many others migrating to the UK or the U.S, as a result of rising anti-Semitism.

INTEGRATION

Despite hundreds of millions of pounds, dollars, and euros spent on integration projects, it appears to be a Sisyphean task – calling into question the rate at which immigration is occurring throughout the Western world and the tolerance with which our societies have operate thus far.

The BBC found that 36 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims believe that if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death. Thirty five per cent of Muslims say they would prefer to send their children to an Islamic school, and 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds say they want government-funded Islamic schools to send their kids to.

The report again highlights the radicalisation of the Muslim youth in the West, with 74 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds preferring Muslim women to wear the veil, compared with only 28 per cent for those over the age of 55.

“Do not let what has happened in Europe and Britain happen to America,” stated Paul Weston, leader of the small British rightwing party Liberty GB, on March 3 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Weston along with the Danish writer Lars Hedegaard warned in apocalyptic terms against an influx of Islamic immigration during a Center for Security Policy (CSP) panel before a standing room only audience of about 60.

After Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney’s introduction described a “not so much nonviolent as pre-violent” Islamic “civilization jihad,” Hedegaard stated that “Europe as we knew it is just a few years away from a complete breakdown.” He discussed an ongoing influx that would last several years of millions of economic immigrants to Europe, people who on the basis of past experience with Muslim immigrant communities “have proven to be impossible to integrate.” According to the European Union’s (EU) Eurostat, Weston noted, 80 percent of these migrants come from outside Syria; among them there is “only a small minority who can claim to be fleeing from war,” Hedegaard concluded.

Hedegaard discussed these migrants crossing the EU’s southern member state borders and then traveling towards the EU’s northern members like Denmark and Germany with their generous welfare systems. “You cannot maintain a welfare system under these circumstances,” he stated, as immigrants “rip off the native population whose parents and grandparents toiled to create this kind of society.” He termed the EU a “master con artist” for having violated a promise to guard the EU’s outer borders given in exchange for the abolition of EU-member state border controls under the Schengen agreement.

Hedegaard foresaw such Islamic immigration creating a “checkerboard of various enclaves” that “will not have much to do with each other except for intermittent low intensity warfare.” The “writ of the law will not run throughout the national territory” as so-called “no-go” areas develop where state authorities such as police and first responders will enter only with great caution. Europe has not seen something like this coming “international war between one culture and another culture” since the 16-17th century wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants.

Weston likewise recalled discussing with British intellectual Roger Scruton how the growth of Islamic communities in the United Kingdom would end in civil conflict involving improvised weapons like bricks. “It is going to be cataclysmic,” Weston stated. In the end, Scruton predicted that non-Muslim Britons “are going to win but we will not be the same good, moral, decent, just people that we were because of what we will have to do.”

Weston already worried about the United Kingdom’s fertile Muslim population that currently numbered 3.2 million after having increased from 200,000 in the 1970s. “As they grow they start demanding more,” he said, “they back this up with terrorism and with jihad…Islam pushes and our government buckles” according to the meaning of Islam as “submission.” Meanwhile, after heavy Muslim migration in recent decades, “Sweden is literally a lost country” and the “rape capital of the European continent,” only exceeded globally in rape rates by Lesotho in southern Africa.

Europol, the EU police agency, gave Weston further concern with estimates that 5,000 jihadists were among the million migrants recently entering Europe. He stated that two of the November 13, 2015 Paris attacks were migrants (actually, all were European citizens, although some had trained in Syria and pretended to be refugees when returning to Europe). Accordingly, when the next “inevitable attack happens,” European politicians “will have the blood of the murdered and the blood of the maimed on their hands.”

Both Hedegaard and Weston expressed frustration with European political leadership. “From country to country, it doesn’t make any difference what party you vote for” in terms of changing policy direction, Hedegaard said. Weston discussed how British Muslims can claim welfare benefits for four wives although polygamy is illegal, meaning “our own government is paying to colonize Britain.”

Hedegaard discerned Leftist designs in liberal immigration policies. After losing the Cold War, the Left wants

to break down our democracy and national cohesion by other means. They couldn’t do it by means of the working class, because the working class left them. Now they want to import the so-called new proletariat that will never become integrated in bourgeois society and on the basis of which they hope to be able to gain the power that they could not get as hardline socialists.

By contrast, “Donald Trump would absolutely love it in Europe at the moment, because there are walls and fences being built all over the place,” Weston noted with respect to renewed national immigration controls. Mention of Trump caused Gaffney to express approval of a moratorium on Islamic immigration into the United States until various security questions found a solution. “It causes offense to some, I grant you, but it’s an eminently sensible approach,” he said. “We have enough jihadists here already. We actually don’t need to increase their numbers.”

Yet Center for Security Policy Executive Vice President Jim Hanson, who had built schools, dug wells, and conducted immunization programs for Muslims as a Green Beret, differentiated between the panelists’ concerns and prejudice. “You will first be called a hater and an Islamophobe,” he stated for anyone concurring with the panel. “Islam is accepted as a religion in the United States,” he distinguished, but Islamic “sharia is not a religion; it is a totalitarian ideology that includes religion” to which not all Muslims adhered.

Hedegaard and Weston’s dire description of valid European problems mimic French dystopian fiction, but the pair’s personal encounters with European hate speech laws are real (see here and here). Yet for the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the pair’s opposition to these laws simply gave one more reason to condemn CSP for giving a CPAC venue to these two “racists.” Americans who wish to discuss Islam without inhibitions often presented by prosecutorial dangers in Europe should heed Weston’s warning: “Make sure that you retain your First Amendment rights.”

Andrew E. Harrod is a researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project, an organization combating the misuse of human rights law against Western societies. He can be followed on twitter at @AEHarrod.

The Islamic State terrorist organization known as ISIS first outlined their strategy to attack the West in a 99-page manifesto issued in January of 2015 under the title of “Black Flags from Rome.” ISIS states that their strategy in the West is to do “hit and run tactics and then go into hiding in order to waste millions and billions of dollars on police while shutting down major cities.”

The manifesto further notes that, “once the media attention dies down, the Islamic State will tell another ‘Sleeper Cell’ to carry out another attack again.” Their reason being that “this will put the police on high alert again, forcing them to shut the entire city down again, causing the [economic] loss of billions, so the people of Europe will realize that there is a constant war in their country, they will not feel safe.”

On Tuesday, March 22, ISIS followed through on this strategy as they carried out a deadly assault in the heart of the European Union’s administrative capital in Brussels, Belgium, making this the third such terrorist attack on European soil in just over a year. The Brussels assault involved simultaneous, coordinated attacks on key infrastructure sites hitting at least two major public sites. The first, occurred shortly after rush hour at 8 a.m. as two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at the departure hall of Brussels’ Zaventem airport, the country’s international airline hub, killing at least 11 people and injuring another 80 or so more. One hour later, another suicide bomber detonated his suicide belt in the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels, killing another 20 people and injuring over 100. The Maelbeek station was targeted deliberately as it services the modern headquarters for the 28-nation E.U.

In response to the attack, Belgium’s government raised its terrorism-threat risk to the maximum level, appealed to people to stay home, and shut down the airport and Metro system while canceling the high-speed Eurostar and Thalys trains linking the city to London, Paris and Amsterdam. ISIS succeeded, once again, in carrying out their strategy outlined in their initial manifesto as the people of Europe are coming to the harsh realization that their country is in a state of constant war.

As John Schindler of the Observer notes, “the game changer [for Europe] was last November’s horrific attacks in Paris, the bloodiest events on French soil since the Second World War.” The November 13, 2015, attack in Paris that killed 130 people and injured 368, was carried out in virtually the same manner of the Brussels attacks, albeit on a smaller scale, but with the same modus operandi featuring simultaneous attacks on soft targets in various locations by multiple shooters and suicide bombers. The Paris attacks “turned out to have a significant Belgian footprint, with several of the attackers linked to Molenbeek, a notorious Brussels suburb that’s half-Muslim and known to authorities as a hotbed of radicalism. For the police, Molenbeek has been a no-go area of sorts for years, leaving jihadists free rein to raise funds, collect arms, and plot mayhem elsewhere,” writes Schindler. In short, Europe is now reaping what they have sown as Europe itself has imported a major threat into its countries based upon the utopian liberal policies of multiculturalism, open borders, and an unwillingness to address the underlying religious cause of jihad.

It is due to the unholy alliance between the modern day leaders of the left and Islam itself that is to blame for the war like conditions in which Europe is currently living under. This utopian agenda of the left is being exploited by jihadist sympathizing European Muslims as they have begun to ally with Left-wing activists in order to pave the way for what ISIS has calls the “conquest of Rome.” This was specifically mentioned in the ISIS manifesto alluded to earlier as the terrorist organization explained the following:

A growing population of left-winged activists (people who are against; human/animal abuses,
Zionism, and Austerity measures etc) look upto the Muslims as a force who are strong enough to
fight against the injustices of the world. Many of these people
(who are sometimes part of Anonymous and Anarchy movements) will ally with the Muslims to fight
against the neo-Nazis’ and rich politicians. They will give intelligence, share weapons and do
undercover work for the Muslims to pave the way for the conquest of Rome.

So how will this happen? ISIS writes:

If you have ever been at a pro-Palestine / anti-Israel protest, you will see many activists who are not even Muslims who are supportive of what Muslims are calling for (the fall of Zionism). It is most likely here that connections between Muslims and Left-wing activists will be made…they will start to work together in small cells of groups to fight and sabotage against the ‘financial elite’

This not only applies to Europe, but the United States as well as we have seen a growing alliance between America’s own radical left and those within the Muslim community who espouse the ideology of jihad. For instance, in 2011, we saw the formation of an alliance between anti-Israel and Muslim-American advocacy groups in the United States who capitalized on the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) to promote this agenda. Recalling the Occupy movement, it started in New York’s Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, and spread to more than 100 cities. According to the movements website OccupyWallSt.org, the movement was “inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia aiming to expose how the richest 1 percent of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.”

It didn’t take long till Muslim Brotherhood front organizations such as the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Circle of North America(ICNA) joined the fray in supporting the Occupy Wall Street Movement. In a press release issued on November 2, 2011, ICNA invoked classic leftist warfare rhetoric stating that, “Real progress and development of a country depends on prosperity of society as a whole, not just that of a selected portion of society. Yet the income gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow, and uneconomic recovery across the country has been uneven and unstable at best.” Continuing this leftist sentiment, the press release goes on to conclude that, “ICNA sympathizes with the message of Occupy Wall Street protesters and supports their cause. These protesters are raising legitimate concerns regarding income disparity, unemployment and the state of our economy that cannot be ignored. As American Muslims we stand in solidarity with them across the country.”

In his book The Brotherhood: America’s Next Great Enemy, Erick Stakelbeck explains the underlying motivations behind this alliance writing that the “Occupiers hate America, loathe the free market, want to weaken the United States, overthrow capitalism, and divide the spoils among themselves. Islamists hate capitalism as much as any socialist Occupier does, because they seek to install a global Islamic financial system based on sharia precepts. Additionally, the Islamists and the radical Left both regard the United States—the standard bearer and chief protector of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization—as the Great Satan that must be destroyed.”

This is the ultimate culture war, Islamists take advantage of the lefts moral relativism, its default disapproval for non-Western, non-Judeo-Christian forces, and its tendency to pathologize any opposition to its causes as bigotry and ‘phobia’, notes Stakelbeck. While the Occupy Wall Street Movement has flamed out, the unholy alliance continues to metastasize like a cancer throughout our nation.

The latest alliance being the growing nexus between Islamist groups like CAIR, ICNA, and many others with the radical leftist “Black Lives Matter” movement which casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration while its agitation has provoked police killings, violence, lawlessness and unrest in minority communities throughout the U.S. Simply put, Black Lives Matter is the exact organization that a terrorist group like ISIS could only have dreamed of and as Kyle Shidelerof TownHall documents, jihadist front organizations like the Muslim American Society (MAS) and ICNA have already crept their way in.

Detailing a conference between MAS and ICNA in 2015, Shideler highlights that at the event, MAS leader Khalilah Sabra openly discussed the importance of Muslim support for Black Lives Matter, and urged “revolution.” Comparing the situation in the United States to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Arab Spring revolutions, she asked, “We are the community that staged a revolution across the world; if we can do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?”

Reporting on this merging “revolutionary” alliance goes back as far as the first outbreak of disorder in Ferguson, Missouri writes Shideler, noting that “few may recall the attendance at Michael Brown’s funeral of CAIR executive director Nihad Awad.” Awad was identified in federal court as a member of the Palestine Committee, a covert group of Muslim Brothers dedicated to supporting Hamas in the United States. CAIR joined other Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Ferguson, and from then on the alliance between Black Lives Matter has only become emboldened. Look no further than the massive civil disobedience movement set to begin next month under the banner of Democracy Spring to confirm that the Muslim Brotherhood has embedded itself nicely within Black Lives Matter and other leftist groups.

To conclude, radical Islam and the radical left in Europe is the same as radical Islam and the radical left here in America. The left, no matter where it is, uses Islam as means to achieve their radically different ends, which ultimately boils down to power and control. In Europe you’re currently seeing what those ends look like while here in America, the means are only beginning to take shape. The lesson to be learned from Europe is that the unholy alliance between the left and Islam inevitably leads to the latter taking over the former. Europe is at war with not only an enemy it cannot contain in Islam, but with itself as well.

America too will soon follow suit if we continue down Europe’s utopian path of multiculturalism, open borders, and political correctness. We are living on borrowed time.

TEL AVIV – The deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels last week and in Paris last November are dress rehearsals for a coming “big” attack inside the United States, a leading Islamic State-allied militant claimed in an exclusive interview.

Abu al-Ayna al-Ansari, a Salafist movement senior official in the Gaza Strip, made the claim in a pre-recorded, hour-long interview to air in full on Sunday on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” the popular weekend talk radio program broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia. Klein doubles as Breitbart’ssenior investigative reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief.

Ansari is a well-known Gazan Salafist jihadist allied with Islamic State ideology. During the interview with Klein, Ansari seemed to be speaking as an actual IS member, repeatedly using the pronoun “we” when referring to IS and even seemingly making declarations on behalf of IS.

IS has been reluctant to officially declare its presence in Gaza for fear of a Hamas clampdown, but the group is known to be active in the coastal enclave and Ansari is a suspected IS leader. IS-aligned militants have taken responsibility for recent rocket fire from Gaza aimed at Israel.

Klein asked Ansari whether IS maintains cells inside the U.S. and if the terrorist group is “planning anything in America.”

Ansari responded:

Aaron, the battle with America is a very long one, a very tough one, a very hard one. America has a black record with the mujahedeen, and this black record will not be purified but with blood, and lots of blood. Only blood will cleanse what America did to the mujahedeen. And I can confirm that our leadership made it very clear thatwhat happened in Paris, what happened in Brussels was only a small rehearsal before the big thing that will happen in America.

This is the commitment; this is the engagement of our leadership to the mujahedeen. I cannot give details and the truth is that I don’t know the small details – how many agents we have and where we have them. This depends on our leaders, the Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the general military commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani. They will decide when and where to strike in the United States.

But I can tell you that when we are in touch with our different components, with the leaders of the Islamic State. They confirm, they make it very sure and very clear that it is only a question of time when there will be a strike in America. And as I said before, what you saw in Paris, what you saw in Brussels will be only a small rehearsal in comparison with what will happen in the United States.

Ansari’s reference to senior Islamic State commander Abu Omar al-Shishani as alive and active comes after the Pentagon announced earlier this month that a U.S. airstrike on March 4 near al-Shaddadi, Syria targeted al-Shishani. The Pentagon did not make an official statement about whether al-Shashani was killed in the strike, but it told reporters on background that he was “likely killed.” IS has denied that Shishani was killed.

Al-Battar Media, responsible for producing the video, is reported to be the media arm of the Kalibat al-Battar al-Libi, an elite Libyan-based ISIS unit with ties to the Islamists responsible for the Paris and Brussels attacks. Al-Battar is headed by Fezzani, an intelligence source tells the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

Confusion reigns over where he was held because U.S. and Italian media reports suggest he was held in Guantanamo Bay. However, U.S. government records suggest he was released to Italian custody from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. Fezzani used several aliases, which adds to the uncertainty.

A court in Milan tried and ultimately acquitted Fezzani in March 2012 for his alleged involvement in jihadist activities prior to his initial capture in Afghanistan 2001.

Upon his return to Tunisia, Fezzani joined the Al-Qaida linked Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, which has been involved in a jihadist insurgency against the country’s government in the wake of the Arab Spring. A year later, in 2013, Fezzani traveled to Syria to fight under the banner of Al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. He then went to Libya in 2014 where he became a leader of the Kalibat al-Battar militia, which ISIS’s elite special forces unit.

“If the information on Fezzani proves to be true, it is very disturbing. Just like the head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, this was a man we had in our detention facility and let go,” terrorism analyst Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who teaches at the Marine Corps University, told the IPT. “More and more it seems that the administration, and their counterparts in Europe, do not understand that the ideologues of global jihadism are far more important than the operational commanders of individual cells or organizations.”

The European Union was first brought into being to “safeguard” world peace. Today, the employees of the EU in Brussels were told to cower in fear in their government buildings while Islamic Jihadists once again terrorized this city whose population is already nearly a quarter Muslim.

Practicing Muslims outnumber practicing Christians in Brussels. After a search for Islamic terrorists had shut down the city, its Socialist mayor complained, “We will not live under the Islamic regime.”

Brussels is the first outpost of ISIS in Europe. It is a doomed city that will be lost to Islam within our lifetimes. A Muslim terrorist attack in Brussels is as surprising as a car bombing in Baghdad.

Belgium’s home affairs minister announced last year that the government does not “have control of the situation in Molenbeek.” Jihadists rule in this Muslim neighborhood, which is just as much of an outpost of ISIS as anywhere in Syria or Iraq, just 12 minutes away from the European Parliament, 15 minutes away from the European Commission, 23 minutes away from NATO HQ and 22 minutes away from Brussels Airport; today’s target. ISIS doesn’t have to invade Brussels. It just has to take a short drive.

Last year during the European Parliament elections, Brussels became the site of the first terrorist attack by a returning ISIS fighter. The target was the Jewish Museum of Belgium. The Mayor of Brussels said that more diversity was the answer. Next year, Jihadists operating partly out of Brussels carried out a massacre of 130 people in Paris while shouting “Allahu Akbar” at each killing spree.

The dead included French, Belgians, Mexicans, Germans, Portuguese, Romanians and Chileans. The killers were all Muslims.

That is what diversity looks like now.

Over 500 Jihadis from Belgium are fighting with ISIS. There are nearly a hundred Jihadists back from the unholy wars in Syria living in Molenbeek in Brussels. They should be deported, but the EU would object. And so instead, the European Union and all of Europe remain under siege by the Jihadist next door.

The “organized and living Europe” of the EU’s founding Schuman Declaration isn’t aiding “civilization.” The EU is neither organized nor living. Instead it’s killing Europe and civilization. The dream of uniting Europe isn’t just dead. It’s a virulent cancer that routes hordes of angry young Muslim men from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea to loot, rape and murder their way across Europe.

At the heart of the EU’s rot in Brussels are No-Go Zones controlled by Jihadists. Despite all of Belgium’s gun laws, in Molenbeek, Jihadists buy and sell at the Great Bazaar of Kalashshnikovs. The bazaar is stocked and the terrorists move in and out of Brussels thanks to the open borders of the EU.

While the EU claims to control Europe, there is no safety, security or control even in its own capital.

Even if the rest of the world only pays attention when the bombs go off and knives come out in Brussels.

When the European Union was created, the foreign-born population of Belgium consisted of some 300,000 people, most of them Italians and Greeks, in a country of over eight million. Today the foreign-born population stands at 1.4 million, much of it Muslim, with a large additional population of Muslim settlers born in Belgium. Belgium once colonized. Now it is being colonized.

The capital of the European Union will be one of the first cities in Europe to fall to the invaders.

We already know how the next part goes. The broken glass will be cleaned away. The bloody wounded will be removed out of sight. The dead will be buried. An Imam will be invited to the memorial service. Everyone will wear t-shirts printed with the latest terrorist tragedy meme. The cafes will reopen. The music will play again. Couples will forget and stroll the streets.

Bureaucrats will sit down in their glass towers and draw up plans for the future of the EU in a city that will be lost in a decade. Then they will try to ignore all the heavily armed soldiers in the streets.

Islamic terrorism is not the ultimate threat. It is the real world intruding on the progressive fantasy.

16% of young Muslim men in Belgium are willing to say that they believe that terrorism is justified. But they are only the tip of the iceberg. Support for Sharia law hovers around the 60 percent mark. The former may bomb airports or shoot up museums, but it’s the latter who will destroy the country.

On the television screens, the politicians come and go talking of “youthful despair”. But the Muslim terrorists with their guns and bombs haven’t given up. It’s the Europeans who gave up.

This is not a crisis of “hopelessness”, “integration” or any of the other excuses that politicians use to explain Islamic terrorism without dropping the dreaded I-word that invokes the fearful charge of Islamophobia. The Greeks and Italians who used to do the dirty work in Belgium were not bombing subways and museums no matter how bad the “overcrowding” and “joblessness” might be.

This is not a social problem. It is a supremacist problem.

Muslim terrorism is not caused by despair, but by hope. A Muslim suicide bomber does not die out of hopelessness, but because he hopes to impose Islam and earn 72 virgins in paradise. He shouts “Allahu Akbar”, proclaiming the supremacy of his Islamic religion over Christianity, Judaism and all the rest, as he kills his victims because he believes that a different Europe is possible. An Islamic Europe.

The latest terror attack in Brussels has been called “an attack on all of Europe.” But it’s Brussels, with the insistence on open borders and open migrant policies, that is the real attack on all of Europe.

Muslim immigration is its outcome. Muslim terrorism is the outcome of Muslim immigration.

The European Union was born out of despair. Europeans lost confidence in their own nations. They opened their borders and sat on the beach while the migrant waves washed away their future.

Brussels is where Europe’s future died. It is the first real outpost of the Islamic State in Europe. It shows us Europe’s terrible future if the invasion does not end.

There are three visions in Brussels. The vision of an eternal European Union in a doomed city that will be lost sooner than Venice sinks beneath the waves. The Islamic vision of a Caliphate rising minutes away from the ponderous headquarters of the multinational European project and the vision of independent nations and peoples protecting their own borders from the invaders for the future of their children.

Take in the sight of broken glass and bloodied bodies, frightened families fleeing through the smoke, faces covered in ash, and remember that this is the outcome of the progressive vision for Europe.

This is reality intruding into the fantasies of immigration and integration where a new multicultural Europe shines forth as a beacon from Brussels to show us a better world. These people died so that you would know the truth. They were not the first and they will not be the last.

If we do not want to end up the same way, we must end Islamic immigration before it ends us.

In the wake of Tuesday’s deadly terror attack in Brussels, presidential candidate Ted Cruz issued a statement calling on a renewed effort to oppose Islamic terrorism, and warning against what he described as Europe’s “toxic mix” of migrants infiltrated by terrorists and “isolated radical Muslim neighborhoods.”

The threat these neighborhoods pose to both public safety and social cohesion has been well-identified, even if disputes over the use of terms like “no-go zone” have been heated. They are largely abandoned by European law enforcement and left to the devices of a mixture of criminal gangs and Islamist imams.

In the terror attack in Brussels, the neighborhood in question is Molenbeek, where Paris massacre terrorist Salah Abdelslam was captured following a major shootout between gunmen and Belgian counterterror forces. Media outlets ranging from the reliably leftAtlantic, to NBC News and the Telegraph, to the more conservative Fox News have all explored Molenbeek’s role as neighborhood where criminal gangs and Islamic jihad intermix.

None seem to dispute that Molenbeek is a problem for Belgian security. So who would be surprised by Cruz’s suggestion to “empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized”?

CAIR Constantly Opposes Anti-Terrorism Efforts

Enter the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR rapidly charged that Cruz’s suggestion that Muslim neighborhoods ought not be left to the ravages of Islamic radicals was “Islamophobia.” This is par for the course for the Hamas-linked CAIR, which has never met a law enforcement effort against terrorism that it didn’t oppose.

CAIR officials have even threatened Muslims who work with law enforcement.

CAIR is notorious for urging Muslim community members not to talk to law enforcement. In 2009, while Somali residents of Minneapolis were desperate for law enforcement assistance in dealing with imams recruiting their children for the terrorist group Al Shabaab, CAIR intervened.

As Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali activist testified to Congress: “CAIR held meetings for some members of the community and told them not to talk to the FBI, which was a slap in the face for the Somali American Muslim mothers who were knocking on doors day and night with pictures of their missing children and asking for the community to talk to law enforcement about what they know of the missing kids.” CAIR later attacked Bihi as an “Islamophobe.”

CAIR officials have even threatened Muslims who work with law enforcement, with one-time CAIR chapter leader Cyrus McGoldrick warning that “snitches get stitches.”

Elsewhere, McGoldrick threatened a suspected informant on his Facebook page, claiming he intended to “blast him later,” an ominous reference that probably referred to exposing the suspected informant publicly. In one California case, CAIR held a press conference to elicit information about the identity of an FBI informant in an anti-terrorism case.

The End Result Is More Radicalized Locales

To the extent law enforcement must be “empowered” to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods (as it does all literally all other neighborhoods in America), it’s because of the constant effort by CAIR and its allies to disrupt and eliminate counterterrorism efforts. Such disruptions include successfully pressuring the city of New York to abandon a successful New York Police Department intelligence program because it targeted a number of mosques, even though the NYPD was able to demonstrate that the surveillance targets were the focus of legitimate investigations involving criminal and terrorist activity.

CAIR’s end goal isn’t preventing American Molenbeeks but rather creating them.

CAIR doesn’t only oppose U.S. law enforcement patrolling Muslim neighborhoods, but it opposes U.S. law enforcement even knowing where Muslim neighborhoods are, which iswhy it bitterly fought and successfully killed a Los Angeles Police Department project to map the demographics of Muslim neighborhoods. The LAPD intended to use the project to conduct outreach and better understand community needs, not to profile, but CAIR and its allies nixed the plan anyway.

Ultimately, CAIR’s end goal isn’t preventing American Molenbeeks but rather creating them. Muslim communities alienated from law enforcement and the wider American society, totally reliant on Islamist groups like CAIR for representation, is CAIR’s end goal. That’s why it continually invokes the risible claim that America is “at war with Islam,” and seeks to portray all law enforcement as villains who frame innocent Muslims, rather than trying to protect Americans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, from the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Cowering under desks and running for their lives, this is the terrifying moment passengers were caught up in an ISIS suicide bomb attack at Brussels Airport today in a series of blasts that have killed at least 34 people and injured 170 across the city.

Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and ‘dismembered bodies everywhere’ after two blasts rocked the terminal at around 8am (7am GMT), killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens of others.

Then 79 minutes later at 9.19am, at least 20 people were killed and scores injured, some critically, when a blast hit a Metro station just 400 metres from the EU headquarters in the city centre.

At the airport, there were reports of a firefight between police and the attackers who shouted in Arabic moments before detonating their bombs, one of which was understood to contain nails…

The three terror suspects seen on surveillance video Tuesday moments before bombs exploded at Zaventem Airport in Brussels should have raised alarms with security officials and even a vigilant public, said U.S. experts with foreign intelligence.

While it might be easy to sport red flags in retrospect, the trio believed responsible for an attack and came minutes before a coordinated attack at a nearby Metro station acted and dressed like terrorists, said Don Hubbard, a private security expert who once headed security worldwide for Trans World Airlines. Two wore black shirts and single gloves that investigators believe may have hidden detonating devices.

“If I saw men in the check in area, wearing a single glove, that alone would have been enough for me to take them aside and subject them to further scrutiny,” said Hubbard, a former FBI agent. “If I didn’t like how they answered questions, security would have potentially stopped any attack.”…

Officials revealed details Tuesday on at least nine Americans wounded in the deadly explosions at the Brussels airport and a subway station in the city, with one of the victims identified as a U.S. Air Force officer.

The unnamed officer and five of his relatives were wounded and “some are critical,” a defense official told Fox News. U.S. officials told The Associated Press the officer is a lieutenant colonel.

“Our priority at this time is the safety and well-being of our airmen and their families,” Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James told reporters. U.S. European Command said it would not release details of the service member’s injuries due to privacy concerns.

Mormon church officials said three missionaries from Utah were seriously injured in the airport attack and have been hospitalized. A fourth wounded missionary is a French woman.

State Dept. spokesman John Kirby says investigators are still working on a final count of all the Americans who were hurt…

If the day’s news had been about some random shooting, you could count on President Obama to be among the first liberals to be calling for more gun control, in a lengthy speech possibly peppered with some comments about how “tired” everyone in America is of gun violence.

But that wasn’t what happened today. Instead, Brussels was hit by a series of terrorist bombs that ISIS has claimed responsibility for, killing at least 34 people, according to news accounts as of this writing.

So what we get to see instead is the bored Obama who could only expend 51 seconds of a prepared speech to say a little something about the latest atrocity in the War on Terror that the White House seems to think ended the moment President Messiah landed in the Oval Office.

It was pure Obama boilerplate: “The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium and we stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people. We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally, Belgium, in bringing to justice to those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.”…

I think the world has seen by now what the president means when he “stands in solidarity” with someone — pretty much nothing…

In a press statement Tuesday morning condemning the terror attacks in Belgium that killed at least 30 people and left 100 others injured, Secretary of State John Kerry managed to address the deadly incident without ever mentioning Islam, Muslims, jihad or any other term linking the attacks to Islamic terrorism.

Here’s Kerry’s press release, in full: “Today’s abhorrent attacks in Brussels are an assault against the Belgian people and the very heart of Europe. Our thoughts are with all those in Brussels, including the injured and the loved ones of those who were killed, and with the first responders and security personnel who are working tirelessly to keep Brussels safe. The U.S. Embassy in Brussels is making every effort to account for the welfare of American citizens in the city, and in the days ahead we stand ready to provide whatever support the Belgian Government may require. As I made clear this morning in a conversation with Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, the United States stands firmly with our ally Belgium and with all of Europe in the face of this tragedy. Attacks like these only deepen our shared resolve to defeat terrorism around the world.”

The attacks in Brussels, in which Islamic militants set off explosions at both the Zaventem Airport and a city metro station, were quickly labeled as terrorism and immediately linked to radical Islam. Local reports stated there were shouts in Arabic and gunfire along with the explosions, and a suicide belt was found at the scene.

But regardless of the fact that Islamic radicals are hell-bent on blowing up anything and everyone around them, we certainly wouldn’t want to offend anyone…

By refusing to see the underlying ideology behind all jihadist attacks…

…she can only see criminal behavior, not warfare…

Her blindness would prevent us from ever going on offense against the jihadists… Dave

Eric Bradner CNN Tue March 22, 2016

WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton says the United States must increase its surveillance to avert Brussels-style attacks on unprotected “soft” targets.

“We have to toughen our surveillance, our interception of communication,” the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential contender said Tuesday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer… “We have to also toughen, as you say, ‘soft targets,’ with greater police presence — there is no getting around that.”

Her comments come in the wake of the latest strike on European soil for which ISIS has claimed responsibility. At least 30 people were killed in the attacks in Belgium’s capital.

Clinton said terrorists are “getting more sophisticated” in their construction of explosives to escape detection. “We have to continually be learning and getting ahead of these thugs and criminals in order to prevent them doing what they did in Brussels,” she said.

In the interview, Clinton called for increased information-sharing between the United States and European countries. She broke with Donald Trump’s Monday criticism of the U.S. role in NATO. The Republican front-runner had declared that the United States is spending too much money in the trans-Atlantic organization.

“I’m a very strong supporter of NATO. It’s the best international defense alliance I think ever,” Clinton said. “We have to keep adjusting and changing its mission to meet the new threats that we as members of NATO face. I think it would be a grave error to walk away from Europe, to walk away from NATO.”

She added: “I think NATO has a role to play. I would certainly as president and commander-in-chief be looking to define that role, to make sure that the capacity, the tools and assets that NATO has are at the disposal of member nations like Belgium during this terrible event that they are experiencing, and then let’s see what more we can do.”…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is losing confidence in Hillary Clinton and her mishandling of a private email server, a New York Post columnist suggested on Sunday.

“FBI chief James Comey and his investigators are increasingly certain presidential nominee Hillary Clinton violated laws in handling classified government information through her private e-mail server,” Charles Gasparino said career agents had told him.

“Some expect him to push for charges, but he faces a formidable obstacle: the political types in the Obama White House who view a Clinton presidency as a third Obama term,” Gasparino added. “With that, agents have been spreading the word, largely through associates in the private sector, that their boss is getting stonewalled, despite uncovering compelling evidence Clinton broke the law.”

Clinton is facing a federal indictment over charges that she mishandled classified information during her tenure as secretary of state by storing it on a personal email server. The FBI earlier this month granted immunity to Bryan Pagliano, a Clinton aide who helped to establish the server in the basement of her Chappaqua, New York home, as part of its investigation into the matter.

“You don’t start granting people close to Clinton immunity unless you are seriously looking at charges against your target,” Gasparino quoted one former official as saying…

Hot Air March 22, 2016 Ed Morrissey

Ted Cruz demanded an end to any plans of absorbing Syrian refugees in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, and a more robust response from Barack Obama than just “another lecture on Islamophobia.” In his press conference in Washington, Cruz declared the vetting program in place at State “woefully inadequate,” and ripped Obama for participating in Raúl Castro’s propaganda stunts in Cuba and “enthusiastically agreeing with the Castros on their attacks on America.” Instead, “President Obama should be planning to travel to Brussels” to show unity with our Western allies — a gesture that Obama rejected after the Paris attacks.

“Today’s attacks in Brussels underscores this is a war,” Cruz said. “This is not a lone war. ISIS has declared jihad.”

“It is way past time we have a president who will acknowledge this evil and will call it by its name and use the full force and fury to defeat ISIS,” he continued. “Until they are defeated, these attacks will continue. Their target is each and every one of us.”

Cruz, one of five remaining presidential candidates, urged America needs a leader who is not afraid to speak about terrorism in bold terms.

“We need a president who sets aside political correctness,” Cruz insisted. “We don’t need another lecture about Islamophobia.”

Cruz also rebuked Donald Trump for suggesting that the US should “retreat from NATO” in the middle of the war. “Even Barack Obama hasn’t gone so far” as to make that suggestion, Cruz said, calling it a “pre-emptive surrender.” It’s the toughest criticisms that Cruz has made against his Republican rival for the nomination, at least outside of a major debate.

However, it’s clear that most of Cruz’ frustration and disgust was aimed at the current occupant of the White House, and the Democrats’ frontrunner for their nomination, Hillary Clinton. The response to Trump came as an answer to a question from the press, but Cruz went after the Obama-Hillary “political correctness” of the past seven years unprompted.

The only way to eliminate these threats is to defeat ISIS as soon as possible, Cruz argues, and it’s difficult to argue against that position. Sitting back and setting up security pickets clearly hasn’t worked, and ISIS recruitment in the West grows in proportion to their staying power in Iraq and Syria. The West, and especially the Obama administration, hasn’t taken the “jayvees” seriously until it was far too late, and we will suffer the same kinds of attacks soon if we do not elect leadership with a serious grasp of the threat radical Islam poses…

During an interview on CNN Monday evening, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called out the liberal media for getting “nervous” when discussing radical Islamic terrorism.

“I recognize that folks in the media get really nervous when you actually call out radical Islamic terrorism,” said Cruz. He went on to defend putting on his list of foreign policy advisers Frank Gaffney, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration, who has repeatedly spoken out against radical Islam.

“Frank Gaffney is someone I respect,” said Cruz. “Frank Gaffney is a serious thinker who has been focused on fighting jihadism — fighting jihadism across the globe. And he’s endured attacks from the left, from the media, because he speaks out against radical Islamic terrorism.”

“Let’s be precise,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interjected. “When he said back in 2009, ‘Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America’s first Muslim president.’ Do you agree with him on that?”

“Listen, I don’t know what he said in 2009,” said Cruz. “I don’t have the full context. I’m not interested in playing the media ‘gotcha’ game of here’s every quote every person who’s supporting you has said at any point [and] do you agree with every statement. That’s silliness.”

“Here’s my view,” he went on. “We need a Commander in Chief that defends America, and defending America means defeating radical Islamic terrorism and defeating ISIS. What is completely unreasonable is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s consistent pattern of refusing even to say the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’”…

Donald Trump commented on the suicide bombings that occurred in Brussels Tuesday morning just hours after the brutal terror attacks.

‘Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!’ wrote the Republican front-runner on Twitter. Trump then said in an interview on Fox News the US needs to ‘shut the borders,’ a statement he repeated later in the morning while appearing on Today.

In that appearance he also told Matt Lauer he is a firm believer in using torture to get information from people behind attacks like the one in Brussels, stating; ‘Waterboarding is fine.’

Hillary Clinton called into Today as well two hours after Matt Lauer said she declined an interview and criticized Trump’s comment, saying; ‘We don’t need to resort to torture.’

Trump also called into Mornings with Maria Bartiromo saying that the US must have surveillance of Muslims in this country, particularly at mosques…

They are cowards who fear to alienate any possible constituency… such as Muslims…

Cruz speaks in the style of a practiced attorney and constitutional scholar…

…with facts and logical precision…

Trump, with his years on reality TV…

…knows how to please the crowd with his plain-talk style…

My predictions for November are…

We can be certain that more terrorist attacks will strike the West…
…between now and Election Day…

By then the Democrats will look like idiots, if not downright evil…

Either Cruz or Trump will be elected president…
…depending on whether the country is in the mood…
…for a 10th-degree black belt or a street brawler… Dave

Brittany M. Hughes Media Research Center March 22, 2016

Back in January, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called out the city of Brussels for its “assimilation” of Muslims, claiming the Belgian capital is “like living in a hellhole right now.”

Trump told Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo at the time: “There is something going on, Maria. Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Sharia law, where they want this, where they want things that — you know there has to be some assimilation. There is no assimilation. There is something bad going on.”

“You go to Brussels — I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful — it’s like living in a hellhole right now,” he continued. “You go to these different places. There is something going on.”

Trump caught a good amount of flak for the comments, igniting a firestorm of backlash on Twitter and spawning the hashtag “#hellhole.”

In an article titled “Donald Trump Finds New City to Insult: Brussels,” The New York Times reported…

Hundreds of illegal immigrants from terror hotspots are using what critics describe as loopholes in U.S. immigration policy to try to remain in the country indefinitely, according to data obtained by Congress.

Taking a page from the playbook used by Central American women and children to gain U.S. entry, hundreds of immigrants from Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran and Syria caught entering the U.S. last year made asylum claims to avoid deportation – and, in doing so, asserted they had a “credible fear of persecution.”

This phrase is important because it allows them to be released and work in the U.S. Prior to 2009, the U.S. held in custody many asylum seekers entering the U.S. illegally until their cases were resolved in court — but an Obama administration policy change allowed those fearing persecution to be released.

The finding that asylum seekers from turbulent Middle Eastern and African countries are now using this phrase to gain entry and remain on U.S. soil has raised security concerns on Capitol Hill.

“These numbers illustrate vulnerabilities throughout our immigration system,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., said Tuesday. “Dangerous criminals and potential terrorists are gaming the system without consequence. The Obama administration is compromising our national security and safety for its political agenda.”…

In light of the news from Brussels this morning where 31 have been killed and more than 150 injured due to yet another horrifying terrorist attack, we need to keep our eyes and ears open now more than ever. Now is the time to remain vigilant and throw political correctness in the garbage. Lives are at stake here and we must do our part to report any suspicious activity.

In our #OpenEyesSaveLives campaign, we hope to remind you of important tips that you need to keep in mind as we all try to do the best we can to protect our communities and our loved ones. What happened in Brussels this morning could happen in any city in the United States.

As the world watches Europe right now, we have to to keep our eyes open in communities as the on-going threat of terror remains. New York City as well as DC and other major cities in the U.S. have now raised the terror alert to the highest levels. The time to be vigilant is now. Stay alert, be aware, and speak up.

Remember the Times Square bomber back in 2010 who left his SUV running with the keys in it un-attended. It took a street vendor seeing the unusual SUV with smoke coming from it and notified authorities. He literally saved thousands of lives in Times Square that day. It was the quick reaction of a citizen who noticed something and took action that helped saved lives.

It is imperative that we stay alert and understand what to actually look for.

If you see or notice any of the below or additional suspicious activities, please contact the local authorities immediately. Remember, you can do so anonymously.

Here are a few more national security tips on what to look for, as well as a few important reminders:

Unusual clothing in a particular setting.

If you live in a warm state such as Florida or Arizona and see someone dressed in an overcoat or unusual clothing for the season and the place, they may be hiding or packing explosives or a suicide belt. Report anyone appearing unusual to the authorities immediately.

Backpacks, bags, and luggage left unattended. Be aware if a person strategically places and leaves a bag.

Unusual activity in or around your neighborhood. (You know best!)

The signs you heard about in the news in connection with the San Bernardino attack is the perfect example.

Take note of a person taking pictures or recording of a building’s side doors, loading dock, cameras and back alley.

This includes any sporting event, concert, stadium or arena.

Always trust your instincts

We cannot emphasize this point enough. Better safe than sorry. If you strongly feel uncomfortable about a situation or a person, please do not hesitate to call the authorities and bring it to their attention. This is critical.

You can send information to authorities anonymously.

If you do see suspicious behavior, do not confront the individuals involved.
Take note of the details and remember “Salute”:

Suspicious activity is often recalled after an event. We must train ourselves to be on the lookout for things that are out of the ordinary and arouse suspicions.

Staying alert is NOT about becoming paranoid. Staying alert is being aware of one’s surroundings. Be alert to indications of possible trouble.

Stay tuned to ACT for America, the nation’s largest national security-focused grassroots advocacy organization, as we continue with our #OpenEyesSaveLives campaign. Political correctness is costing lives. Help us keep Americans alert and safe!

We need you. America needs you. Be the eyes and ears America needs to help keep our country safe. YOU can be the difference.

The “Open Eyes, Save Lives” campaign from ACT for America is more important today than ever before, but we need your help! Please help by donating today or setting up a monthly donation so that we are able to reach millions of Americans and help save lives.

Please forward this e-mail to everyone you know.

Stay tuned for more specific tips, reminders, and articles on what to look out for regarding national security in our #OpenEyesSaveLives email series. You do NOT want to miss these!

Coordinated attacks on Brussels this morning may signal the start of an ISIS-led guerrilla warfare campaign in the West.

Christopher Dickey The Daily Beast March 22, 2016

PARIS — As explosions rocked the airport and the metro in Brussels this morning, fears grew that the threat of terrorism is morphing into the threat of guerrilla war in Europe.

The attacks, which killed more than 20 people, came four days after the arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, a member of the terrorist cell that attacked Paris cafés, a sports stadium, and a concert hall in November, slaughtering 130 people. On Sunday, the Belgian foreign minister warned that Abdeslam was planning a new attack.

Some reports suggest that this attack, clearly coordinated in the style of the Paris carnage, was what was in the works, and went ahead without Abdeslam. It was known that at least two of his associates were still on the run. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was clear Europe was no longer simply the victim of a series of isolated terror attacks. “We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war,” he said. “We are at war.”

As French scholar Gilles Kepel has pointed out, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS, which carried out the Paris attacks and which presumably was involved in today’s bombings, is following a playbook written more than a decade ago: The Call for an International Islamic Resistance by Abu Musab al Suri, a Syrian jihadi…

Just four months after the horrific Islamic terror attacks in Paris, French President Francois Hollande made a statement Tuesday just hours after terrorists attacked the airport and subway system in Brussels with suicide bombs.

“Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit ,” Hollande said. “France will implacably continue the fight against terrorism both on the international level and at home.”

The attack on the Brussels metro station today sits under the European Parliament building and near the U.S. Embassy, striking at the heart of Europe and surely chosen by ISIS to make a larger statement.

The border between French and Brussels has been shut down in an attempt to keep accomplices of the attack from fleeing into France. Hollande called an emergency meeting to discuss the ongoing scourge of Islamic terrorism in Europe as attacks from ISIS start to become normal…

A chilling internal French police report has revealed that as many as 90 ‘kamikazes’ may be roaming the EU ready to attack. An officials also reveals that although borders are open, European countries are not sharing intelligence…

…that the public is only beginning to realize that this is a World War… Dave

Published March 21, 2016 Associated Press

SYDNEY – Police have charged a 20-year-old man and a 16-year-old school girl in Sydney with raising money for the Islamic State group.

New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn said the pair were arrested in the western suburb of Guildford on Tuesday. She says they will appear in a Sydney court on Tuesday charged with financing terrorism, an offense which carries a potential maximum 25 year prison sentence.

Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan said 14 people had now been charged under the Operation Appleby counterterrorism investigation since 2014…

Terrorists attacked Brussels airport and a metro station in the center of the city March 22. Here’s what we can learn from the attacks.

Elliot Friedland The Clarion Project Tue, March 22, 2016

Europe is reeling from the latest terrorist attacks, this time against Brussels, now confirmed to be terrorist attacks. Three blasts have been reported so far, two in the Zaventem Airport and one at the Maelbeek metro station some 500 meters from the European Parliament.

That’s attacks on 26 countries across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia in just three months. This is a problem everywhere. It is no longer possible to argue it doesn’t impact you or that there is nothing you can do about it.

Terrorism Works If You Let it. This one is difficult to internalize. Terrorism operates by creating an outsized reaction to a highly publicized event. It works to create “terror” in a population by stripping citizens of their feeling of safety, inculcating an atmosphere where people feel they can be attacked anywhere and at any time.

Societies respond with security measures designed to protect the citizenry and these can at times be heavy handed and worsen community relations, driving more people into the arms of terrorist groups. Public confusion and panic exacerbates the problem. One of the aims of groups like the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is to create a backlash of anti-Muslim bigotry and thus instigate a war between Muslims and everyone else. Chaos, hatred and confusion is the favored working environment of terrorists and Islamists since it enables them to advance their goals under the cover of the fog of war…

This will not stop until the ideology is defeated. The countries that have been attacked do not share a cohesive foreign policy platform or common causes except being opposed to the ideology of Islamism.

This Islamist ideology, which seeks to conquer the world and implement sharia governance under a theocratic Islamist caliphate gives people who are drawn to acts of violence an outlet for their grievances and an opportunity to justify crimes on an international scale.

In addition to the military steps needed to tackle violent groups, an international civil society effort to correctly label, deconstruct and intellectually discredit the underlying ideology that justifies such heinous acts will bring an end to the international wave of violence committed in its name…

Once again, jihadists have struck in the heart of Europe, this time in Brussels, Belgium. Reports indicate that at least 30 people were killed and more than 180 were wounded after coordinated attacks at an airport and subway station. ISIS has taken credit for the attack.

The Brussels attack follows a bombing over the weekend in Istanbul, Turkey, in which a suicide bomber stalked a group of Israelis. He blew himself up as they were leaving a restaurant, killing four people, including two Americans.

Brussels is the headquarters of NATO. The subway bombing occurred at the station that serves the European parliament. This attack targeted the heart of the European experiment in open borders and multiculturalism. (See more below.)

Paris. San Bernardino. Istanbul. Brussels. Thanks to radical Islam, the ripped flesh and broken bodies of the innocent is becoming the new normal.

Around the world, an increasing number of nations are subjected to organized attacks planned and executed by the soldiers of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, along with increasing numbers of so-called “lone wolf” attacks here in the United States.

While the radical Islamists are solely responsible for the carnage, the flaccid policies of multiple governments, including our own, are making the danger far worse.

Open Borders

For decades now, Europeans have attempted to create a world that does not exist, and their citizens are dying as a result. That world is essentially defined as a continent in which nation-states no longer matter, and borders are seen as an impediment to the free flow of goods and people.

It is a nice theory, as long as everybody ignores reality. Some borders run along the old and reemerging Russian empire. Others are near the boiling cauldron of North Africa and the Middle East. The free flow of goods and people has allowed an invading army of unknown size to embed itself in every major European city.

In spite of the growing stack of corpses, political parties in Europe that say the obvious — you can’t have open borders when you are at war with barbarians– are labeled as “fascist” and ostracized by elite opinion. In the United States, any politician who dares to suggest that our borders be secured risks similar scorn.

Multiculturalism

Not only is Europe encouraging large numbers of people from different cultures to come to the continent, it is failing miserably to integrate them into European values. As a result, there are growing neighborhoods that can be thought of as “Little Baghdad” or “Little Kabul.” In these “no-go zones,” strict interpretations of Islam prevail, and the infection spreads throughout Europe as more and more ISIS fighters return to the continent.

Here in the U.S., while the process is not as far along as it is in Europe, liberal elites bristle at the idea that English should be our official language. They constantly smear our country and history as oppressive (see Obama in Cuba), and they promote separatism, rather than unity, in multiple ways.

We are by no means immune to the same radical Islamic virus that has infected Europe. Minneapolis, Minnesota, of all places, is a center of Somali immigration. It has provided more recruits for Islamic jihad than any other city in America.

When conservatives have dared to suggest that we should be monitoring mosques more closely, elite opinion makers are aghast and repulsed. But a new study finds that textbooks affiliated with hundreds of Islamic schools right here in the U.S. are critical of America and biased against Israel.

Meanwhile, through his rhetoric and actions, Barack Obama continues to feed the notion that American Muslims are victims, that Middle Americans are bigots and that there is an epidemic of anti-Islamic hate crimes in America…

Benjamin Franklin once said, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” There could be no truer words spoken in the area of terrorism. With fresh attacks rocking Europe, and no leadership coming from America, what will Europe and the rest of the world do to defend themselves?

The Washington Post reports: ‘The triple terrorist bombings that killed at least 31 people on Tuesday morning in the heart of Brussels — the European Union’s capital — prompted a swift reactions from European leaders, with France’s prime minister declaring that “we are at war” and Britain’s prime minister asserting that “we will never let these terrorists win.”’

And here is the problem. What do these statements mean? We knew that they meant when they were spoken in Churchill’s day. We knew a hundred years before that even. What seems to allude us is what does being at war and winning that war look like.

The reason is simple. We have sat back in our armchairs, arrogant and smug and cast judgments on history and the decisions made in a different time. We feel sorry for the Japanese, who were bussed into camps. This has made us swear never to make this cruel mistakes again, but at what cost?

Is 250 plus dead and wounded high enough a price to feel good about ourselves? What about the thousands who have lost their lives just since 9/11? When will we finally realize that there are people who hate us and will stop at nothing to destroy all that we have built?

These leaders are speaking boldly about their commitment to fighting a war, what are they willing to do to win that war? It is not enough to recognize that you are fighting a war, you actually have to fight to win. Will they, with us, have the will to say that they we never give in the fascism of our age? Will they, like Churchill before them swear never to surrender?

The January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks were a wakeup call to take radical Islam seriously. The November Paris attacks put that call on a loudspeaker. The December San Bernardino attacks showed it could happen here, too. The Brussels attacks are proof that radical Islam has spread throughout the European continent. There are likely to be more terrorist attacks in the months ahead. How long are we going to ignore the obvious?

Global Islamist jihad is at war with all of Western Civilization. President Obama and other western leaders may not see it as a war, but the other sides does. Left largely unchecked over last seven years, radical Islam has exploded worldwide. According to the head of EUROPOL, 5,000 Europeans have travelled to Syria & Iraq to train and fight with ISIS and since returned to Europe. They are sleeper agents setting up sleeper cells.

A guerilla army has invaded Europe. We have seen that there are terrorist cells in the United States. Radical Islamists now savage Africa, the Levant, the Middle East, the Saudi Peninsula, and all the way to Pakistan and South Asia.

Not all the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are extremists or terrorists, not by a long shot. But even if just ten percent of one percent are radicalized, that’s still a staggering one million six hundred thousand people bent on destroying Western Civilization and the values we hold dear. The fascists wanted to control the world, so did the communists, but the Islamists want to brutally kill a significant percentage of the world – and that is anyone standing in the way of their end-times Caliphate.

We have been one step behind this enemy for years. We’re still tongue-tied by political correctness, while they’re setting off bombs at train stations, airports and community centers. We are losing this war, and our losses grow greater every day, while terrorists recruit off the images of the West’s most innocent and vulnerable fleeing in horror. The hour is already late to defeat this growing scourge. But if we are to defeat radical Islam will only be with a multifaceted, comprehensive strategy that calls on all the aspects of the national power of ourselves and our allies – like we summoned to defeat the Nazis in WWII or the Communists in the Cold War.

On March 22, 2016, multiple jihadists, under orders from the Islamic State (ISIS), carried out coordinated terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium. Dozens were killed, around 200 were injured. In this video, I explain what will happen in the near future as a result of this attack.

Republican presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Tuesday slammed President Obama and his polices, including the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, following the deadly Brussels terror bombings for which the Islamic State is now reportedly claiming responsibility.

“The first job of the president is to be commander in chief,” Cruz told Fox News following the morning rush-hour attacks that killed at least 31 people in a Brussels airport and on the city’s subway system. “It’s unconscionable. It needs to change. … If I am president, I will destroy ISIS.”

Cruz’s comments follow front-running GOP candidate Donald Trump calling for an end to the visa program, which allows roughly 20 million people a year to visit the United States.

“I’ve been talking about this for a long time, and look at Brussels,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” “Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime, and now it’s a disaster city.”

At a press conference earlier in the day in Washington, D.C., Cruz said the visa waiver program “no doubt” needs “serious scrutiny.”

And he called for an “immediate halt” to Obama’s recent plan to allow tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States, as a result of that country’s years-long civil war.

“Our vetting programs are woefully insufficient,” Cruz said, arguing that ISIS has already stated its intentions to try to infiltrate terrorists among the refugees so they can “commit acts of jihad.”

Trump last year called for a temporary ban on all Muslins into the U.S. after the Paris attacks in November by Islamic extremists and the San Bernardino terror attacks in December. And he has vowed if elected to build a security wall along the entire U.S. southern border.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in the wake of the attacks, “Americans stand in solidarity with our European allies.”

“Terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed,” said Clinton, a former secretary of state in the Obama administration. “Today’s attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world.”

GOP presidential candidate John Kasich said he was “sickened” by the images of the carnage and that the U.S. must “redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil.”

The other Democratic presidential hopeful, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has yet to issue a public response.

Citizens of 38 countries can travel to the United States for business or tourism for up to 90 days, under the visa waiver program.

Congress recently put new restrictions on the program for dual citizens of Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Syria, but the program overall continues.

“We’re having problems with the Muslims and we’re having problems with Muslims coming into the country,” Trump also said Tuesday, on Fox Business Channel’s “Mornings with Maria.”

Cruz also said at the Washington press conference: “Today’s attacks in Belgium underscores that this is a war. This is not an isolated incident. This is not a lone wolf. ISIS had declared jihad. … The time for the president’s political correctness has passed. … We absolutely have to revisit our immigration policy across the board to prevent Islamic terrorists from coming in.”

***

At about 6:25 min into the video Ted Cruz explains how Obama’so refusal to name the enemy impacts policy giving the example of how refugees are screened. If you can’t use words like jihad or ask refugees about their beliefs then you can’t screen out those who would do us harm.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter happened to be scheduled to testify before Congress today. Thus, he provided the government’s first reaction to the jihadist atrocity in Brussels, in which 31 are dead (the toll is expected to rise) and scores of others have been wounded. Secretary Carter called the attacks a “tragedy.”

The mass murder obviously has tragic effects for those killed and wounded, and for their families, but this is not a tragedy. It is a war crime targeting a civilian population in the course of an ongoing war, which — notwithstanding the reckless posturing by the commander-in-chief — is not close to “winding down,” much less being over. It was simply shocking this morning to watch split screens. On one, we saw President Obama spend fleeting seconds on a peremptory acknowledgement of the attacks before moving on to his long, celebratory speech about how he has put the Cold War to rest in Cuba by working with “President Castro.” On the other screen, Belgians chaotically fled fire and debris while emergency personnel rushed the wounded to ambulances and carried out the dead.

Our enemies are at war with us. They continue to execute acts of war, not tragedies, against us. We cannot “end” the war by withdrawing from it; we can only lose that way. We cannot prevail, or even adequately protect ourselves, without seeing the enemy plain: radical Islam — Islamic supremacists determined to impose sharia on the world, with jihadists as the pointy end of the spear, and ideological sympathizers as their support system.

Because the latest round of war crimes occurs in the context of our momentous decision about who will be the next commander-in-chief, it is worth observing that Ted Cruz, whom I support (and on whose advisory team I serve), has stressed a recognition that the enemy is radical Islam. This is not just campaign rhetoric. We know, nearly a quarter century after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, that jihadist cells arise and thrive in ideological enclaves; that is where the radicalization, recruitment, fundraising, plotting, and injection and protection of jihadist immigrants occurs. We cannot deny reality by rationalizing that if we admit the truth we will be misunderstood as being “at war with Islam” — as in all Muslims.

What we like to think of as “radical Islam” is actually a legitimate and rabidly anti-Western interpretation of Islam that is followed by millions of Muslims. It is irrelevant to non-Muslims in the West whether theirs is a correct or incorrect construction of Muslim scripture. The remorseless fact remains that its adherents believe it — with a fervor that inspires the kinds of attacks we’ve seen today and have seen over and over again. Those adherents include Muslims who lack the commitment to carry out attacks themselves but nevertheless provide moral (and other) support to those who do, and who populate the Western immigrant enclaves in which the ideology thrives.

It’s a welcome fact that there are other ways of interpreting Islam that do not endorse war and hostility against the West; those who offer these interpretations are our allies, and we should be encouraging them rather than turning to enemies such as the Muslim Brotherhood to help us conduct “community outreach.” Still, the fact that there are pro-Western Muslims and authentically tolerant interpretations of Islam does not — and cannot be allowed to — obscure the fact that Islamic supremacism is a mainstream construction of Islam. It is not “false” Islam, or “anti-Islam.” It is Islam that competes, violently, with other constructions of Islam.

It is not our job to broker the claims these competitors make regarding what is the “true Islam.” It is our job to protect ourselves and our allies, and to crush the jihadist armies and cells that are prosecuting the war against us. If we do not acknowledge what the threat is and where it is coming from, we will continue to embrace the policies that empower the enemy. In a time of war, we cannot indulge a policy of mass immigration from countries where sharia supremacism is a significant presence.

With respect to Muslim immigrant communities that are already here, we must have sensible surveillance policies that identify and focus police attention on mosques and community centers that endorse anti-Western Islamic supremacism. That is not a dragnet against all Muslims; it is the arena where pro-American Muslims can step up and help us. No law-enforcement or intelligence agency wants to waste its time and resources investigating innocent people. But we have to be clear that Muslims who endorse Islamic supremacism, who want our Constitution supplanted by sharia, are on the wrong side of this war, regardless of whether they cross the line into violence.

Finally, we cannot tolerate jihadist safe havens anyplace on earth. The administration recently conceded that it has no strategy to deny the Islamic State — which has claimed responsibility for today’s attack — their sanctuary in Raqqa (to say nothing of their other strongholds). Let’s be clear: If ISIS is orchestrating attacks on the West from Syria and Iraq, that is an American national-security challenge, not just a civil war in a faraway place. American national-security problems cannot responsibly be delegated to other forces who will carry out our defense and war-fighting responsibilities for us. This is our problem.

There has not yet been a serious bombing campaign against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, and it is fair enough to say that the number of troops we may have to commit hinges on how committed we are to an intense air campaign. We should not delude ourselves, however: The jihadists are planning to attack the United States as well as Europe, and it is going to take American military commitment to destroy them — not to carry out an experiment in democracy-building, but to eradicate the threat to our nation and our allies.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is as senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

Terrorists struck an international airport in Brussels and a subway station not far from the European Union’s headquarters earlier today. Initial casualty reports indicate that at least 34 people were killed and approximately 170 more were injured. Two explosions reportedly rocked the Brussels Airport and a third bomb was detonated at the Maelbeek station in downtown Brussels.

The Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State, has issued a claim of responsibility on its social media sites. The claim can be seen above.

“Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State,” Amaq’s statement reads in English.

The Islamic State media outfit has not yet provided any additional information concerning the attacks, but the claim is hardly surprising.

Today’s attacks in Belgium took place just four days after Belgian and French police arrested Salah Abdeslam, an Islamic State operative who is suspected providing logistical support and explosives manufacturing for the terrorist team responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015 coordinated attacks in Paris. Another suspect, Mohamed Belkaid, was killed in a shootout during the raid in Brussels that netted Abdelslam.

The Islamic State has long targeted Belgium. And today’s attacks emphasize the persistent threats Europeans face.

After the assault in Paris, French President François Hollande explained that the massacre was “planned in Syria, organized in Belgium, [and] perpetrated on our soil with French complicity.” Belgium was a key operational hub for that attack and other terrorist plots. The Islamic State has repeatedly said that Belgium is in its crosshairs.

European counterterrorism officials identified a Belgian man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, as a key figure in the Paris attacks. Abaaoud was subsequently killed during a raid by French authorities, but his network continues to pose a threat to France, Belgium and other European nations. Known terrorists such as Abaaoud and his comrades are slipping through the cracks because European officials are being forced to investigate more threats than ever.

French officials linked to Abaaoud to two other plots in France earlier in the 2015. According to the Associated Press, Abaaoud is though to have been involved in an attack on a Paris-bound train and another on a church in the suburbs of Paris.

The cover of Dabiq 7 mocked Muslims who stood in unity with France over al Qaeda’s attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015. Dabiq described Abaaoud as “a mujahid being pursued by Western Intelligence agencies for his jihad in Belgium.” Two members of Abaaoud’s cell were killed in a shootout with Belgian police during a raid on their safe house in Verviers on Jan. 15, 2015, just one week after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo’s offices.

In his interview with Dabiq, Abaaoud admitted that he and two accomplices, “Abuz-Zubayr al-Baljīkī (Khālid), and Abū Khālid al-Baljīkī (Sufyān),” traveled to Europe “in order to terrorize the crusaders waging war against the Muslims.”

Abaaoud said Belgium was a target as the country “is a member of the crusader coalition attacking the Muslims of Iraq and Shām [Syria].”

After some difficulties in traveling to Belgium, the three jihadists “were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned to carry out operations against the crusaders,” he claimed.

Abaaoud mocked Western intelligence services for failing to prevent him from entering Belgium and establish a cell, and then later failing to capture him after the Verviers raid.

“Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave and come to Shām despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies,” he stated. “All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence. My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary.”

Abaaoud said he was stopped by security officials after the Verviers raid and police failed to match him with a photograph of him that was obtained while he was in Syria.

“I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance,” he said.

Regardless of whether or not Abaaoud’s account is entirely accurate, it is clear that the Islamic State’s network in Europe has been able to launch attacks even though its operatives are sometimes well-known in Western counterterrorism and intelligence circles.

Belgian authorities have repeatedly warned that their country could be attacked at any time. After the raid on Abaaoud’s cell in Verviers, Belgian federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said the Islamic State was “on the verge of committing important terror attacks,” the AP reported. Van der Sypt added, “It shows we have to be extremely careful.”

An Islamic State fighter succeeded in executing an attack in Belgium in May 2014. Mehdi Nemmouche, a fighter who worked in the Islamic State’s jails in Syria, opened fire at a Jewish museum in Brussels,killing four people.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal. Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.